Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet conveyance guide unit which guides a conveyed sheet in order to smoothly convey a sheet, and further relates to a sheet conveying apparatus and an image forming apparatus with the sheet conveyance guide unit, such as a copying machine, a printer and a facsimile.
Description of the Related Art
In an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine and a printer, a guide member which guides a conveyed recording sheet is often made from a plate-like member with rigidity such as a metal plate. However, recently, such a guide member is sometimes made of a sheet-like member with elasticity. In this case, the recording sheet sticks to the plate-like member by frictional electrification produced between the recording sheet and the sheet guide member, thereby inhibiting the proper conveyance of the recording sheet. Further, it is known that a toner image which has not been fixed is disturbed by such frictional electrification.
When a sheet-like guide member is employed, usage of a conductive sheet is proposed in order to eliminate the influence of the frictional electrification as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-46920.
However, in the apparatus of Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-46920, since the sheet-like guide member follows the recording sheet and is always in contact with the recording sheet, the sheet-like guide member is electrically charged by friction. Due to an electrostatic force of the friction, the recording sheet sticks more firmly to the sheet-like guide member, thereby generating a greater friction force and increasing a sheet passing resistance.
Because of this problem, when employing a sheet-like guide member, a relatively small sheet-like guide member is partially used.